"Is that maimed Aeradalla dead?" Sarraya whispered. "He hasn't moved an inch since I saw him."
Tarrin didn't answer. He slid inside the archway, and then he boldly padded right into the chamber, towards the crown. There were no other scents or sounds in the chamber, which meant that it truly was as empty as it appeared to be. The Conduit seemed to shimmer and vibrate, and it became more and more pronounced as he approached it; the Conduit was reacting to him just as strands did. He doubted it would bend in, as strands did, for Conduits were much larger and more fixed in their positions than strands, so he deemed it safe to advance. He came around the chair and looked down at the Aeradalla seated there.
If he wasn't dead, he certainly looked it. It was a middle-aged Aeradalla, though his appearance looked to be one much older than he truly was, with only one wing that looked to be atrophied from lack of exercise. His eyes were closed, and his whitish-blond hair was dirty and matted from lack of grooming. He wore a simple robe made of velvet, black and tied with a silken cord. Raiment more suited for a noble than a crippled, shrivelled Aeradalla.
"He's not dead," Sarraya noted. "He may as well be, though. I guess Aeradalla wings don't grow back. Without his wings, he can't get down from here."
Tarrin turned away from the unconscious Aeradalla and stared at the crown. It was indeed the magical object he had sensed, and that close to it, he could feel its power rippling through the air around them. It was the crown that sustained the city, but how it did that was quite beyond him. Its weaves were so unbelievably vast and intricate that he could spend his entire life studying it, and only understand half of what he was seeing. The only thing of which he was certain while he stared at that unassuming crown was that no mortal had the ability to make such a thing. It had to be a product of the gods.
Such power. He had never felt anything like it. It was almost intoxicating, trying to seduce him with promises of holding high a power unrivalled in the world, filling his subconscious with images of adoration and the fulfillment of his every wish and desire. But Tarrin wasn't like others. He found the power of it to be enticing, but Tarrin's motivations were not human. Wealth and power and might meant less to him than security and contentment and well-being. He already had some of those things. He didn't need power to make himself feel any better, or give to him what he could get on his own without its help. He could see the magic of the crown, and he understood that what it offered was not power, but enslavement. And he would never be a slave to anyone or anything ever again. Not a person, not a god, not that crown. Its power had tried to reach into him, but found that it had no effect on his alien mind.
But that power had had its effect on this one. He could feel it now. He had become totally enslaved to the power of the crown, had become like an object himself, devoted to the intoxicating aura the crown emanated. He could feel it infuse the wretch, infuse and corrupt the harmony of his body with its power. Such power could not help but corrupt the weak, or those with motivations that weren't grounded in the real world. He would waste away and die sitting there being close to the object of his obsession.
"Is that crown it?" Sarraya asked.
Tarrin nodded. "It supports the city somehow. That's what it was made to do, but it's too complicated for me to figure out. In any event, we'd better go. The crown radiates a power that can entice the weak, and though I don't much care for what it offers, I'm not so certain about you."
"I'm a Druid, Tarrin," she said with a teasing grin. "If I need something, I can just make it. The crown can't offer me anything I don't already have, or can't get."
He nodded calmly. That was the exact attitude she needed to be immune from the crown's enticing allure. "This one wasn't so lucky," he said, motioning at the wasted figure.
"I almost pity him," Sarraya sighed. "Should we leave him here?"
"What else can we do?" he asked her. "If we heal him, he'll just come right back here and waste away again. The only way to cure him is to free him of the influence of the crown, and that would take Sorcery."
"Well, could you...?" Sarraya asked, wiggling her fingers.
"You know very well I can't use my power, Sarraya," he told her bluntly.
"Well, it just seems wrong to leave him here like this," she said helplessly. "As a fellow flier, I fully understand what brought him here."
"What do you mean?"
"Losing the ability to fly is like a living death, Tarrin," she said earnestly. "Those months I was landbound was a living hell. When this one lost his wing, he probably craved something to fill the void that was left in his life, and that may have led him up here, to that crown. Who knows, maybe he thought it could heal him, and he was willing to risk having this happen to him to get back the one thing in his life he couldn't live without."
Looking at it like that, he could understand her point of view. It would be like him becoming human again. There would always be something missing from inside him, a part of him that had been ripped away, and it would leave a void in him that nothing could fill. Instead of dying, instead of simply accepting it, he very well may have had them bring him up here to see if he could somehow use the crown to restore his lost wing. But he had failed, and now a slow death by starvation and dehydration loomed in his future. He almost felt sorry for the man. Almost. He was still a stranger, and the man's fate was of no concern of his.
And yet....
She was right. It was wrong to just leave him here. He should at least try to use Sorcery. If he tried and failed, then he could leave without feeling bad over not trying. At least he would have tried, and there was no dishonor in trying your hardest and not succeeding. The struggle was more important than the result.
Besides, as it had been before, Tarrin's human half simply could not turn its back on someone in pain, someone in need. As it had reacted to Sheba, so it reacted to this wasted wretch.
He blinked, shaking his head. Those damned Selani had made him soft.
Roughly, he reached out and grabbed the man by the head. It was not a gentle grip. Then he emptied his mind and opened his senses, feeling the Weave, sensing it, opening himself to the sensations it inspired inside. He could sense the crown and the Conduit, could sense the strands that spun off the Conduit. Once he fully felt them, could hear the pulsing of the magic through them, he reached out to them, seeking a contact on the Weave....
And found nothing.
Maybe you're already in contact with the Weave, Sarraya had told him, not so very long ago. He remembered that, remembered that he'd failed because he was trying to find something he already possessed. He had been trying to touch the Weave when he already was connected with it, in ways that extended beyond a simple touch. He was a part of the Weave now, a living extension of it, an extension strong enough to alter it with his very presence. He didn't have to touch the Weave, for he had already found his connection with it.
You've been growing stronger and stronger, even without trying to use your magic, she had said. Could she be right? Could he be ready to regain his powers? He thought that he understood the mistake he had been making before. This time, instead of trying to touch the Weave, he should try to simply use his magic. But with no magic inside him, how would he affect the magic of the Weave? He would have nothing to exert force against it, nothing to push it out of the strands to do as he needed it to do.
The strands bent towards her, as if her very presence exerted force on them, he remembered thinking when he saw the Sha'Kar woman, when she had forced him to find the core of his power.
Could that be it? Could his very presence, the power of his ability alone be enough to cause the Weave to respond to him? He reached out with his senses, closing his eyes tight, reaching into the Conduit, into the strands, into the air around him, sensing every iota of magical power that surrounded him. He could feel the magic there, the strands, the flows, the little surges of power that flowed through them like invisible blood. He could feel the magic, sense it, see it with his mind's eye. And since he could see
what he was trying to affect, it allowed him to try to use it.
It was almost ridiculously easy, and it felt much like using Druidic magic. He pushed against the Weave not with power inside him, but with the force of his will and the power of his innate magical ability. He felt the Weave shudder, then vibrate, then burst out into a strange choralling sound that only a Sorcerer could hear, an odd harmonic of energies that seemed to cause the strands to vibrate, almost to sing.
And the flows pulled free of the strands.
He sensed the differences immediately. The strands fought against him, actively resisted him, trying to wriggle free of his will and return to the Weave. He had to clamp down on them and force them to do his bidding, force them with an intense concentration that reminded him of his first days as an Initiate, struggling to maintain his grip on a single flow. They fought against him, but the force of his will finally broke them of their rebellious nature, and they bent to his demands.
They coalesced around him, around his paws, surrounding him with their power. He was so caught up in the exultation of his success that he nearly forgot what he was doing, but he quickly got himself under control. Flows of Water, Earth, and Divine energies wove together beneath his paws, flowing into the Aeradalla before him, the flows of healing. They merged into a powerful weave that scoured the magical contamination of the crown out of the Aeradalla's body much like a wife scrubbed the dirt from her doorstep. Then they assaulted the severed stump that had once supported a wing, overrode the body's refusal to grow out to restore the lost limb. With sickening cracking sounds, a bud of a new wing tore through the Aeradalla's robe, then quickly expanded and filled out, gaining length by the second, until it reached a comparable size as the other wing. Then feathers sprouted from that bare limb, growing as fast as the eye could take it in, leaving behind a wing that was healthy and strong.
Almost as an afterthought, he sent those healing flows through the other wing, restoring muscles melted away by months--years--without use.
"Tarrin!" Sarraya squealed in glee, "you did it!" She threw up her hands and let out a cry of happiness. "You did it! I told you you'd get your powers back within a ride!" she laughed in delight.
He could feel it all now. The tiniest fluctuation of the Weave rippled through him, the smallest variation in its delicate matrix twinged in his consciousness. In that fleeting moment, he was not just connected to the Weave or a part of the Weave, he was the Weave. All of it was within him, or he had expanded until all of it was encompassed within his consciousness. He again found himself staring into the unseen face of the Goddess, lurking within the Weave, and her eyes smiled down on him in loving benediction.
Behind him, the Conduit flared with sudden light, a light ten times brighter than the sun, as a choral harmonic arose from it that saturated the air with wonderful music, like a thousand voices singing in perfect harmony at the same time. In that moment, he felt as if he commanded the power of a god. In that moment, he felt absolutely invincible. But then reality regained a foothold within him, and common sense restored his mind to practical dimensions.
With little more than a thought, he released the magic from his command, and it returned to the Weave. The Aeradalla sitting in the chair had slumped back, sleeping a natural sleep. Tarrin opened his eyes, and blew out his breath in weariness.
He had done it.
He remembered how he did it, and he knew that, just like before, all he had to do was do it once. Do it once to show him how. He would have to practice until this new way to use the Weave seemed natural to him, and he still had to learn how to wield regular Sorcery and High Sorcery, but those were simply building blocks set upon the base he had just formed with his power. He had regained access to his Sorcery, and all he needed to do now was practice. In time, he would return to his former ability.
Sarraya had her arms flung over his face, hugging his cheeks as she kissed him exuberantly on the tip of his nose. "I knew you could do it! I knew you had it in you! I'm so proud of you, Tarrin!"
"Well," he said mildly, using a paw to push her to where he could see her, "now I know one thing for certain."
"What?"
"I'm hungry."
She gave him a look, then laughed. "Well, I think we can fix that, in a bit. What about him?"
"He'll sleep until morning, and he won't remember a thing," he told her.
"Now that you have your power again, we can just jaunt on down--"
"It's not that easy, Sarraya," he cut her off. "I figured out how to use Sorcery again, but I need to practice it. It's different than before. I'm not going to be jumping off the edge of the city any time soon, because I don't feel confident enough to do something like that yet. Unless we want to stay up here until I practice enough to get competent, we're still going to need a ride down."
"Oh. I thought that as soon as you managed to figure it out, you'd be like you were before."
"No, not really," he said with a shake of his head. "I still don't know how to use High Sorcery yet. I still have some things to learn. But for now, it's good to know that I've regained at least a portion of my power."
"You think you have enough to get down off the pillar?" she asked. "I'm still wiped out from getting us up here."
"I think I can do that," he replied after a moment. "It's not that far, so I don't think I'll lose my concentration before I'm safely down."
"Good. Let's find someplace to rest, and as soon as I feel up to it, I'll conjure you anything you want to eat. Anything."
"I feel so special," he mused, wiping sweat from his brow. He hadn't sweated since that fateful day he had come into his full power. The effort of his weaving had caused him to sweat, probably out of reflex than out of getting hot. And the sweat was cold in the crisp night air.
They turned and left the crown, forgotten in the excitement, behind. After ruling it out as the Firestaff, it had no more importance to Tarrin, and he had more important things to worry about, things to ponder and things to feel happy about. They left the crown and the Aeradalla behind, who would be protected from the corrupting spell of the crown for another day or so, more than enough time for him to wake up and leave the obelisk. They were out of sight, and they quickly were out of his mind. He had better things to think about than them.
Strange.
Tarrin lounged underneath a discarded old blanket in the twisted alleyways of the lower city, Sarraya curled up asleep up against his side. They'd been there since getting down from the spire, and while Sarraya slept, he had been pondering the reawakening of his power.
It felt...right. There wasn't any words he could use to describe it. This new way to use Sorcery felt right to him, as if the way he'd been doing it before were clunky and inefficient. Primitive, in a way. Weavespinner magic was more pure, simpler, and in a way, easier. The flows resisted him, but then again, Sorcery always did that. Be it a first time novice or a master Sorcerer, the weave always sought to resist any attempt to cause it to come from the strands. But the way he had learned to do it now didn't require a period of drawing in, a charging phase in order to exert force against the magic. Now he could exert the force of his own will against it, very akin to Druidic magic. All he had to do was will it to happen, and provided he didn't lose his concentration, it would happen.
The use of the magic had also taught him a few things. Weavespinner ways carried with them the same limitation that Sorcery had in any form; there was only so much that could be done without High Sorcery. Weavespinner magic wasn't any stronger than standard Sorcery, the only real difference between them laid in the fact that Weavespinner magic exacted a much lighter toll on its use than regular Sorcery. Since it required much less effort on his part, it would allow him to use Weavespinner magic a great deal longer than regular Sorcery. The only limit--up to High Sorcery--that existed was the strength of his own will and the innate magical ability that had awakened within him. But then again, anyone who could reach the level of Weavespinner already had a powerful will, since they had
already mastered Sorcery in its standard form. Curious, though, was the fact that the basic ability to contain magic didn't change. Then again, it didn't seem to matter to a Weavespinner, since they didn't hold that power inside. Without that indicator, what marked the limits of a Weavespinner's ability to manage flows? Strength of will? Or did that old threshold hold true for a Weavespinner, the same as it did for a Sorcerer? Did the Sorcerer's natural limit hold true even when dealing with Weavespinner magic? He'd have to experiment to find out.
That absence of internal magic marked another pointed difference between Sorcery and Weavespinner magic. Weavespinner magic could be used on one's self, since there was no magic inside to interfere with the flows forming the spell. There would be no fusing of flows and fizzling of spells. It was how the Sha'Kar woman floated in the air; she had used weaves of Air on herself, and since there was nothing in her aside from High Sorcery, which transcended the limitation of using magic on one's self, there was no disruption of her magic.
Strange that Druidic magic and Weavespinner magic seemed to be related. Sarraya had said that the Weave was part of the All. Was there more of a connection between Sorcery and Druidic magic than that?
A curious question. He'd never find the answer, he suspected, because he was already a Druid. He'd been contaminated by the fact that he could use Druidic magic. If there was more of a connection between them, it wouldn't be him to find it, since he already had the ability to connect with both forms of magic.
The sun was beginning to rise, and with it appeared the first of the silhouettes of the Aeradalla against the steely sky. He hadn't thought much about what he was going to do to try to attract Ariana's attention, but like just about everything he'd done up here so far, he was certain that he'd think of something that looked good, then not consider anything past the next few moments. He'd already painted himself into a corner twice with his short-sightedness, and the sad part was that no matter how fully well he knew that he didn't plan very well, he went right on ahead with the first idea that seemed to solve the problem at hand. Without considering the implications of his actions further down the road. The Cat was a very impulsive creature, and he was faithful to his own instincts.
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